Between the Acts
by Vampiric Charms
Summary: When they were younger, they would always offer a safe harbor for the other from their family whenever the need arose. Lin just assumed that stopped when Tenzin got married all those years ago. Apparently she was mistaken. Hinted Lin/Tenzin, complete.


**Set between seasons 2-4, somewhere in that broad range of time. Perhaps some slight spoilers for minor subplot things going on, but nothing huge. Rating for themes of alcohol, mostly, and the implied potential to cheat on one's spouse. Also posted on my AO3 account.  
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**Enjoy!**

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><p><strong>Between the Acts<strong>

Lin leaned back heavily against her pillows, her eyes fluttering closed against her will. The book she'd been reading, propped against her bent legs, drooped at one side, her finger only just saving her place as her mind starting drifting into sleep. She wanted to read. She really, truly did. It had been ages since she'd had a chance to pick this book up, to pick up in the story where she had left off so long ago, and she had been looking forward to cracking it back open that evening. Her body, though, drained and exhausted after so many days straight of working, obviously had other plans.

Frowning, she pulled herself back from that brink and opened her eyes again. The front cover of the book tapped against her thigh as she glossed over the words, forcing her focus back to them. An engaging plot. It _was_. If she could concentrate enough to string the sentences together.

Perhaps lying in bed had been the error. That was it, of course. She should have taken her book to the living room, to her chair with a blanket, and read there. But then, she'd fallen asleep in that chair three times in the last two weeks, and she always woke in the middle of the night with a sore neck when that happened.

It was because of work. Such a surprise.

Gang clashes leading to robberies leading to retaliations leading to arrests leading to...work. For her, mostly. Everyone directly in her path the last few days had noticed the flares in her temper, the suppressed yawns, the late nights. No one had said anything to her about it, of course, but that afternoon Mako sidled into her office to inform her that he had taken care of all of his chief's paperwork for the next two days, would she be able to leave at a reasonable hour that evening?

She'd been so flabbergasted - and torn between wondering if he was buttering her up for something or actually acting from the goodness of his heart - that she had left the station before eight that night, much earlier than she had in months.

But now it was merely ten, and she could feel the exhaustion creeping up on her worse than it had been before, as if her body knew she had let her guard down for just the slightest moment. She needed to sleep, desperately.

The book began to slide again, though this time she didn't try very hard to catch it when the pages breezed shut against her fingers. She exhaled tiredly when her unfocused eyes closed to block out the lamplight she didn't bother turning off. Seconds, she knew, and she would be lost to the world.

A loud pounding on her front door startled her completely awake. The book fell to the floor with a thud as she quickly sat up, hair in her face and heart pounding with a shot of adrenaline.

The pounding continued for another few beats before letting off.

Furious at being disturbed, Lin flung her feet to the floor and grabbed a robe, shoving her arms into it and tying it tightly around her waist. The next knock, a few seconds after the last, was more tentative, but she was too angry now to care. She didn't even check to see who it was before flinging the door open, ready to throw a rock in a solicitor's face.

"Were you actually asleep at a decent hour?"

It was Tenzin, his face flushed and appearing rather flustered – more so now that he saw he had obviously woken her.

"Are you _drunk_?" Lin countered, confused herself when he leaned forward against her doorframe. She reflexively tugged her robe closer across her chest, though there wasn't much to hide that he hadn't already seen many times before.

"No!" he retorted obstinately in a way only Tenzin could, but then the folded frame of his glider clattered into her entryway to the floor and he barely stopped himself from tumbling after it. "Only a little."

"What -"

"Bumi is driving me up the wall! I can't handle it anymore, Lin!"

He pushed past her into her home without waiting for an invitation, the alcohol apparently making him bold - and clumsy, as his foot collided with the tip of his glider to send it skidding until she caught the delicate instrument with a bare toe. She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, seeing her chance at a peaceful evening slipping away with each passing second when she closed the door.

"And why, pray tell, did you come to me?" she asked tiredly, giving up any idea she may have had of turning him around and back out into the misty night air.

"Pema took the kids to visit her parents, like she does every few months," he began to explain, slouching against the wall. "I begged her not to go this time, not to leave me alone with my brother, but she did. Kya's visiting Mom. I just...we don't get along when we're alone. Or at all."

Lin nodded in understanding, some of her agitation wearing away. "I'm assuming he's the one who introduced drinking to your night's activities, then."

"Of course he was!" Tenzin affirmed angrily, starting to grumble. "Don't know where he gets that fire whiskey from, not something we keep on the island. Really, that man is supposed to be an _adult_."

"You're the one who rises to the bait every time," Lin pointed out lightly. She leaned on the wall next to him, a small smile tugging at her lips as she kept the part about the whiskey actually being hers quiet. "Just because he taunts you about being an Airbending monk doesn't mean you need to try to drink him under the table. You loose _every time_. You know that."

He just scowled at her. "_You_ don't loose."

"I also drink a lot more often than you. Let it go and get back home before you can't fly across the bay."

"Well, actually..."

The way he drawled out those two words drew her attention quickly, and she turned her head to look at him, eyes narrowed. "What?" she demanded sharply, leaving very little room for him to keep beating around the bush.

"I was hoping I could...stay here? For tonight?" He made a gallant effort to grin at her, but he was so nervous now it came out distorted and very lopsided. When her eyebrows rose and her jaw dropped in surprise, he continued in an attempt to placate an affirmative answer. "Please? When I left, Bumi was trying to find a way to, I don't even know, make some kind of explosive out of Pema's favorite soap. I can't be there – not because of the soap, but because I don't know how much more of him I can take before I do something I'll regret. Please."

"And you don't think you'll do something you regret if you stay here, instead?"

Tenzin looked away from her forward question, the color in his cheeks no longer only from the drink. He didn't have a response.

Silence stretched on for a tense few seconds before Lin finally sighed, unwilling to argue or fight or scold – or do anything else the rational side of her mind told her she should do right then. She was too tired. "Fine," she muttered, making a small gesture toward the deeper end of the house. "Futon's that way."

He gave her another furtive glance that she didn't miss. "What now?"

"Your futon is just so uncomfortable," he began feebly, rubbing the back of his burning neck. "My back will hurt tomorrow if I sleep there. I'm not so young anymore."

Lin pushed away from the wall to stand in front of him, arms crossed over her chest. "Let me make sure I fully understand this, since you won't come out and say it. You want to stay here tonight, drunk, in my bed. Is that correct?"

"I am not drunk!" Tenzin started to argue, but he quickly lost steam and decided to simply answer her question. "Yes. To _sleep_. I'm exhausted, just like you seem to be."

She just stared at him for a long moment in which he, in turn, stared at his feet. She wanted him to meet her gaze so she could read whatever was going on in his eyes, but he refused to look at her. It would be so easy to say no, to turn him away and go back to her book. But all he was asking for was a safe harbor from his brother, and she knew what that was like. How many times had she asked the same of him all those years ago, from her mother or sister? There was no ulterior motive. Surely there wasn't.

"I'll be there in a minute," she finally whispered, cutting her eyes to the dark kitchen and thinking of an excuse to enter the bedroom far behind him.

Tenzin raised his head, his expression confused. "What?"

"I _said_, I'll be in for bed in a minute. Go." She waved her hand off in the vague direction of her room, not moving from where she was standing when he took a few steps away, watching her over his shoulder. This time, she was the one who wouldn't meet his searching gaze and she bit her bottom lip, waiting, unmoving, until he turned the corner down the hall.

Sucking a deep breath into lungs that suddenly felt deflated, she blinked a few times before her feet were able to pad silently to the kitchen. She took a clean glass from the drainer and filled it with fresh water at the tap, downing it all in one go. Some part of her brain, the part that had told her before to push him out the door, was telling her now that this was a bad idea. It was probably the correct part, truthfully. But another part was so desperate for sleep that nothing else mattered. Her heart was agreeing with that side. Her dreadful, _traitorous_ heart that was beating painfully behind her ribs, yet crying joyously with every thud.

She braced her hands against the side of the counter, leaning forward and squeezing her eyes closed. This really was a terrible idea. Even if they were only sleeping, it didn't matter. There was too much history. She remembered Tenzin's lack of response for her pointed question just minutes before, and she knew he still felt – whatever there was left between them. This night could so easily turn into one more, and one more, and just one more, until a mistake was made that couldn't be taken back.

Her resolution set, she turned on her heel and followed him down the hall. She could see the lamplight hitting the walls before she entered the room, and she opened her mouth, the words ready on her tongue to tell him she changed her mind and he needed to leave.

But she was too late. Tenzin was already under her blankets, turned toward her side of the bed and sound asleep.

Lin ran a hand up her cheek, letting it thread through her hair in an anxious motion. Knowing Tenzin as she did, this was a drunken sleep he wouldn't be roused from easily. He wasn't going to be leaving. Not only that, he had obviously been waiting for her, and had left space for her to slide in next to him the way he always had. She decided, with a moment of highly rationalized thinking, that that, too, was the alcohol. It hurt too much to think otherwise.

Resigning herself to another night of restless sleep, she retrieved her book from the bedside table – realizing as she did that Tenzin had picked it up from the floor and put it there for her – and made her way to the living room where her favorite chair was much less inviting than the bed.

One of them had to make the right choice, even if it pained her to do so.


End file.
